Based Off a Dream

The Talk

You motherforker, you thought you could quit your prim and proper afterlife to fork me. You thought that no one would realize your true colors and you could move on without me?! Your soulmate isn't even forking real, you air-headed beautiful swan...

Eleanor hesitated at her last thought, holding her closed fist in the air a few inches away from Tahani's door. She wanted to be mad at Tahani, but was she really? If anything, she felt frustrated that the two had sex, and Tahani didn't seem as thrilled about it as Eleanor had hoped. Did she regret it?

It might not be personal, I'm pretty sure the mood would be ruined for me if I got pregnant.

Eleanor pushed herself to knock on the door.

Tahani opened it, and Eleanor pushed herself into the mansion.

"I figured out who the 'father' is, it's me, isn't it?" Eleanor said.

"T-That's silly, Eleanor. How would you even-"

"It's the Good Place, we can have big swinging dinks if we want to." Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Thing is, though, I wasn't given a choice. Your fake soulmate placed one on me."

"Fake? Eleanor, you got bees in your brain." Tahani looked away. "Jianyu has been nothing but good to me. I don't know who told you that he was fake-"

"He did!" Eleanor snapped. "He told me that his real name was Jason Mendoza, and that he worked for Michael."

"And I suppose you have a perfect soulmate, right?" Tahani sneered.

"No! I'm not even supposed to be here!" Eleanor admitted. "...wait, please don't tell Michael."

"I knew something was up. You're just some street cat from the Bad Place." Tahani gasped. "Did you place a demon baby in me?! Oh the horror! Jianyu will never want to speak to me again!"

Tahani fell dramatically on the couch behind her.

"You're able to believe that, but not that your soulmate is fake?" Eleanor shook her head. "Whether we like this or not, you got a baby growing inside you. I'm pretty sure they don't have abortion clinics here-"

"I would never do that to my baby!" Tahani wailed.

"Our baby." Eleanor corrected her. "Neither Jason or Chidi will make this situation any easier, this baby needs to be raised by both parents."

"What're you suggesting?" Tahani asked.

"That we go to Michael, and tell him that we...spent a night together and you got magically pregnant." Eleanor explained. "He'll think that only true soulmates can connect like that, and since no one's gotten pregnant here before, he'll have no other basis to go off of."

"Will you tell him that we had...y'know."

"No." Eleanor sat on the couch next to Tahani. "I'll tell him that we just hung out all night after the party was done. We can assure him that we haven't had any sex with our fake soulmates, and then he'll let us be together. For the baby if nothing else."

"You really think he'll buy that?" Tahani asked.

"He'll have to, we're the only ones to create a baby in the Good Place. If that doesn't scream 'we're true soulmates,' than I don't know what will." Eleanor replied. "Are you on board with that?"

"Don't know if I have any other choice..." Tahani sat up, placing her hands over her belly.

"Well, there's one more thing." Eleanor added. "If this arrangement between us is going to work out, you can't lie about things like who the baby's father is."

"I didn't lie, I just..."

"Chose not to say anything? That's lying by omission, I learned that from Chidi's stupid ethics class." Eleanor said. "As soulmates, there'll be no dishonesty baloney, got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. So, now that we got that out of the way...was I good?" Eleanor looked at Tahani.

"What?"

"Was my technique with the new equipment good? Or did I pork you senselessly like a teenage boy?"

"Eleanor!" Tahani felt heat creep throughout her cheeks, looking at the paintings, the stairs. Anything but Eleanor.

"What? It's not my fault that you're the only one that gets to remember the mind-blowing sex we had!" Eleanor huffed. "...I mean, it was something like that, right?"

"I suppose it wasn't half-bad." Tahani got up, offering her hand in Eleanor's direction. "C'mon now, if this 'Jason' really did cause this, we don't have a moment to lose."

Eleanor stared at Tahani's refined doe-like hand, taking note of her glittering lavender fingernails. Was this real? Did Jason inadvertently give Eleanor a smoking hot mama for a soulmate?

No, no. This is just a setup to drive us batty. But does Michael know?

 Eleanor wasn't prepared to answer that question. After all, she needed to be on Michael's good side right now.

"The Good Side." Ha, I'll have to tell Tahani that one later.

As soon as the two women left, someone stepped out of hiding.

"Janet? Take me to Michael's, there's a lot we need to tell him."

"Yes, my dear Jason."